Tim Banks is the CEO of APM, a Canada wide construction and property development company, with its head office in Charlottetown, PEI. My family has lived on PEI for over eight generations and I was born at the Prince County Hospital in Summerside, PEI. I am hoping someone will soon develop a blood test to authenticate when you actually become an "Islander" as I am still having problems explaining where I'm from?

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

I'm sure the "Don't Get Ahead Gang" would love to lock me up and throw away that key... but not a fat chance... on the advice of my lawyer I'm not suppose to talk about this matter as "it's before the courts"... or a polite way of hiding from the media on what might be perceived as an "embarrassing" situation but I haven't been that great at always taking advice and it would only be embarrassing if we were guilty... so that is why they have a court system to sort things like this out... we believe we were working in an approved subdivision infilling a "forest" identified as such in a letter from Forestry but a Conservation Officer from Environment believes we were infilling a "wetland".... the current GIS Map shows it as a forest.... I'm thinking the Conservation Officer is more interested in charging "us" than he is in conservation but I'm sure that will all sort itself out at trial as we'll be pleading "not guilty" to the infilling charges and "guilty" to providing jobs, investment and choice to Islanders something that is coming to a "halt" near you soon... stay tuned...Developer charged with filling wetland without a permitMonday, July 6, 2009CBC NewsThe provincial government has laid charges against a Prince Edward Island property developer for back-filling a wetland without a permit.The charges were filed against Atlantic Property Management, or APM, on July 2. The developer is building a subdivision on 1.6 hectares of waterfront land near Grand Tracadie.A conservation officer claimed APM back-filled wetland on the property between the end of May and the beginning of June of this year.Tim Banks, owner of APM, said the province has been sending mixed messages about the environmental sensitivity of the land.“As recent as 2004, we got a letter from the Department of Forestry indicating that area was, in fact, a forest land,” Banks told CBC News on Monday. “And to our surprise the other day, the conservation officer said it was a wetland,” he said.Banks said his company cut down trees and back-filled the area two years ago as part of landscaping and surveying after receiving approval from the provincial government. He said provincial inspectors have visited the site many times with no complaints.A hearing is set in provincial court in Charlottetown on July 20.Banks said he intends to plead not guilty to the charges.

2 comments:

We tried to have a short drainage ditch dug so that the agricultural field on our property (in the Summerside area) would dry out faster in the spring. We rent the land to a local farmer and are trying to convert the field to organic crops.The contractor saw a bulrush (horrors!) and promptly called the Department of Environment. It took three weeks, five DoE site visits--one that had five people from their department there including a wildlife biologist AND a marine biologist--before we got a permit. This permit made us veer slightly to left of where we wanted to dig because the land in question, which had potatos growing in it three summers ago, is somehow now classified as wetlands. Go figure. Good luck in court. Sorry for my rant...it's a subject near and dear to my heart.